The Silver Gryphon

It was a long, cold, and terrifying night. Every time a drop of water fell from a leaf, someone started. Every time a shadow seemed to move, they all got ready to defend their lives. Skan had never spent a night as frightening as this one, not even during the war, and he prayed no one else would ever have to, either. Stelvi Pass had been a summer day compared to this unending, wet, cold waiting. He didn’t know how Amberdrake was managing to bear up; it was bad enough to endure this knowing that he could, if there was no other choice, escape by flying into the treetops. Even in a fight, he could defend himself against fairly stiff odds. But Drake couldn’t escape and he wasn’t a fighter, and in his place, Skan knew he’d have been babbling with fear.

As soon as there was any light at all beneath the trees, Bern ordered them to move out, down to the river that they had heard all night long. The flood-swollen river, which roared at their feet, with nothing on the other side but a rocky cliff-face and a scrap of path.

“You two aren’t fighters, so you get across the river and hold it for us so we can cross,” he ordered Drake and Skan. Skan took one look at the swollen, raging waters, and seriously considered mutiny.

But Amberdrake just picked up a coil of rope from the wreckage of the camp, and gestured to him to follow down to the rocks at the edge. There he rigged a harness of rope for himself, while Bern and the rest stood nervously with their backs to the water, facing the forest, bows and swords ready. Soon enough, the fog would rise, and when the shadow-creatures came back, the besieged rescuers wouldn’t be able to see them until it was far too late.

Drake, the expert in ropes and knots, moved far more quickly than Skan would have thought possible under the circumstances. His fingers fairly flew as he put together a harness it would be impossible to get out of without undoing at least half of the knots. It must have seemed to the four injured fighters that he was taking a ridiculous amount of time, however. He was even making sure that it would fit over his pack—the precious pack that had what was left of their medical kit, and the oil and oil lamp.

“Hurry up!” Bern shouted, his voice pitched higher with strain and nerves.

Drake ignored them, and turned to Skan. “You can’t carry me over, but you can tow me through the water,” he pointed out. “There’s no way I’m going to slip out of this.”

He fastened the loose end of the rope to a tree at the water’s edge, without elaborating anything, but his plan was obvious to Skan. The harness was rigged so that Drake could swim freely, but could also be towed along easily, which is what he meant Skan to do, flying above the river. Once he got Drake to the other side, the kestra’chern could fasten his rope to a boulder or spike of rock, and the others could plunge in and drag themselves across.

Providing, of course, there weren’t more of those things on the other side, waiting somewhere.

If that last thought occurred to Amberdrake, he didn’t hesitate for a second; once he had the end of the rope tied off, he plunged immediately into the river, almost before Skan had hold of the end fastened to his harness. Caught off-balance for a moment, Skan held on against the tug of the current, then launched himself into the air.

Amberdrake sputtered and submerged once, then steadied. He called out, “It’s drier in here than in the forest!”

Once there, he was utterly grateful that Drake was a good swimmer, and he allowed himself a brief, tension-relieving smile at Amberdrake’s quip. His friend was able to keep his own head above water, so that Skan’s only task was to pull him onward.

Only! This is like playing tug-of-war against five teams of draft horses!

It was obvious within a few moments that this was going to be a great deal more difficult than it looked. They weren’t even a single length from the shore, and Skan wanted to quit.

The gryphon’s wings beat laboriously, the muscles in his back and chest burning with pain, as he pulled against the current and the weight of Drake’s body. Below him, Amberdrake labored against the current trying to pull him under, and occasionally lost the battle. But he had honed his swimming ability in the powerful surf below White Gryphon; between his own strength and Skan’s, his head always popped back above the surface again, long enough for him to get another lungful of air. Ten heartbeats later, they were out of time.

“Hurry!” Bern shouted again, his voice spiraling upward in fear. “They’re coming!”

Skan ignored him as best he could, concentrating every fiber on getting a little more strength out of his wings. Drake was not doing well down there; the treacherous currents kept pulling him under, and each time he rose to the surface it took a little longer.

They were about halfway across when the sounds of battle erupted behind him; short screams and cries that echoed above the roaring river. He ignored those, too, as best he could.

His world narrowed to the face of his friend in the water below, the rope in his front talons, the pain of his laboring body, and the farther shore.

His lungs were on fire; his forelimbs ached with all the tortures of the damned from the strain of holding Drake and pulling him onward. His vision fogged with red, as it had only a few times in the past, when he had driven himself past his limits.